Ukraine's Zelenskyy visits Austria for first time since Russia's full-scale invasion of his country
Austria is famously neutral -- a stance it declared in 1955 after World War II -- and Vienna has come under heavy criticism since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war for maintaining ties with Moscow.
Ukraine's air force said Russia fired 138 strike and decoy drones at Ukraine overnight, mainly at the eastern Donetsk region. Of those, 125 were either intercepted or jammed, while 10 reached their targets. Eight others caused damage as falling debris.
Zelenskyy was meeting with Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen and was set to meet later with Chancellor Christian Stocker. The two presidents were expected to hold a news conference later Monday.
This is Stocker's first high-profile visit from a foreign dignitary since he took office in March at the head of a previously untried three-party coalition after a record five-month wait for a new administration.
Zelenskyy's wife, First Lady Olena Zelenska, and Doris Schmidauer, Van der Bellen's spouse, will also host a discussion about the role of women in promoting peace and security during the trip.
Austria, which was annexed by Nazi Germany in the run-up to World War II, declared neutrality after the war under pressure from Western allies and the Soviet Union. It sought a role as a mediator between East and West, developing ties with Moscow that outlasted the Cold War.
The Austrian government has condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine but also stressed the need to maintain diplomatic relations with Moscow. Vienna has sent humanitarian aid to Ukraine but no weapons.
Former Chancellor Karl Nehammer was the first EU leader to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin face-to-face after the war started. Nehammer traveled to Moscow in April 2022 in a fruitless attempt to persuade the Russian leader to end the invasion.
The Associated Press
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CTV News
29 minutes ago
- CTV News
Trump offers assurances that U.S. troops won't be sent to help defend Ukraine
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, seated from background left, France's President Emmanuel Macron and President Donald Trump listen during a meeting in the East Room of the White House, Monday, Aug. 18, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) WASHINGTON — Donald Trump on Tuesday offered his assurances that U.S. troops would not be sent to help defend Ukraine against Russia after seeming to leave open the possibility the day before. Trump also said in a morning TV interview that Ukraine's hopes of joining NATO and regaining the Crimean Peninsula from Russia are 'impossible.' The Republican president, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders held hours of talks at the White House on Monday aimed at bringing an end to Russia's war against Ukraine. While answering questions from journalists, Trump did not rule out sending U.S. troops to participate in a European-led effort to defend Ukraine as part of security guarantees sought by Zelenskyy. Trump said after his meeting in Alaska last week with Russian President Vladimir Putin that Putin was open to the idea of security guarantees for Ukraine. But asked Tuesday on Fox News Channel's 'Fox & Friends' what assurances he could provide going forward and beyond his term that American troops would not be part of defending Ukraine's border, Trump said, 'Well, you have my assurance, and I'm president.' Trump would have no control over the U.S. military after his term ends in January 2029. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt later on Tuesday emphasized that 'U.S. boots will not be on the ground' as part of any potential peacekeeping mission. The president also said in the interview that he is optimistic that a deal can be reached to end the Russian invasion, but he underscored that Ukraine will have to set aside its hope of getting back Crimea, which was seized by Russian forces in 2014, and its long-held aspirations of joining the NATO military alliance. 'Both of those things are impossible,' Trump said. Putin, as part of any potential deal to pull his forces out of Ukraine, is looking for the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as recognition of Crimea as Russian territory. Trump on Monday said that he was arranging for direct talks between Putin and Zelenskyy. But the Kremlin has not yet said whether Putin, who has resisted previous calls by Trump and others for direct negotiations on ending the war, is committed to a face-to-face meeting with the Ukrainian leader. Asked whether Putin has promised Trump that he'll meet directly with the Ukrainian leader, Leavitt responded affirmatively. 'He has,' Leavitt said of Putin. Trump, early on Monday during talks with Zelenskyy and European leaders, said that he was pressing for three-way talks among Zelenskyy, Putin and himself. But after speaking to Putin later in the day, Trump said that he was arranging first for a face-to-face between Zelenskyy and Putin and that three-way talks would follow if necessary. 'It was an idea that evolved in the course of the president's conversations with both President Putin, President Zelensky and the European leaders yesterday,' Leavitt explained. But when discussing a phone call held after the meeting between Trump and the Russian leader, Putin's foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov gave no indication that either a bilateral or a trilateral meeting with Ukraine had been agreed. Trump said he believed Putin's course of action would become clear in the coming weeks. 'I think Putin is tired of it,' Trump said. 'I think they're all tired of it. But you never know. We're going to find out about President Putin in the next couple of weeks. That I can tell you.' Darlene Superville And Aamer Madhani, The Associated Press
Globe and Mail
an hour ago
- Globe and Mail
The final eclipse of the Truman Doctrine, a cornerstone of American foreign policy
A posse of European leaders came to Washington this week to praise the United States' role in the world, but they ended up witness to the burial of a vital part of it. What the members of the delegation who rushed to join the Ukraine negotiations saw was the decline of the continent-wide confidence that came with a cornerstone of American foreign policy for generations, a doctrine so durable that it has persisted through the decades though it bears the name of a president – Harry S. Truman – who governed decades before most Americans were born. The hours-long White House talks to bring an end to the war in Ukraine may be remembered for marking the final eclipse of the Truman Doctrine, which the 33rd president promulgated a year before Donald Trump was born, and which governed American diplomatic and military strategy through nine presidencies, from the period just after end of the Second World War until the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. It was a period that began with perhaps the greatest military achievement of the United States – Mr. Trump himself this spring cited V-E Day as one of the signal events of the country's history – and ended with what Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.' 'These negotiations over Ukraine are an important bellwether,' said David Greenberg, a Rutgers University historian. 'This is a moment of American reluctance to carry through the principles of the Truman Doctrine that we were all so shaped by.' Analysis: Trump's Ukraine talks show how the global order is changing The Truman Doctrine was born at a joint session of Congress on March 12, 1947, amid worries that communist insurgencies were threatening to spread in Europe, especially in Greece and Turkey. Then president Harry Truman stood at the rostrum of the House of Representatives' chamber and declared, 'It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.' That sentence prompted congressional approval of US$400-million in military and economic aid to Greece and Turkey as part of the struggle to halt the march of Communism through Europe and is regarded as the founding statement of the Cold War. In some ways, too, it was the precursor to the Marshall Plan, known formally as the European Recovery Program, which was unveiled three months later at the commencement exercises at Harvard University and was motivated in large measure by the effort to oppose the spread of communism in Europe. By any measure, the resistance of Ukraine to the Russian incursion that began three and a half years ago is an example of Truman's 'free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by . . . outside pressures.' The Soviet Union is gone, but Russia remains, and so does its expansive inclinations. The tentative peace plan floating around world capitals does call for the United States to route US$90-billion in weapons through Europe, but that is a sale, not a grant–reflecting the arm's distance from Ukraine that the Trump team wants. The Truman Doctrine has been much challenged as policy – in 1977 Jimmy Carter spoke of the 'inordinate fear of communism' – and regarded as the geopolitical approach that led to the now-discredited 'domino theory.' Nonetheless it persisted, even past the détente of the Richard Nixon years and the multiple arms-control agreements Mr. Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan signed with aging Soviet leaders. Additional pacts were signed by George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Analysis: Truth will likely be the last casualty of war in Ukraine The Truman Doctrine's precept of supporting freedom among oppressed peoples, moreover, was applied to the nation-building undertakings of more recent presidents, especially George W. Bush in Iraq. All that is regarded with disdain in the Trump White House. 'Trump seems willing to normalize Putin's aggression and erase any clear delineation between free democracies and aggressors,' said Melvyn Leffler, a history professor at the University of Virginia and author of A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War. 'These negotiations are a repudiation of the Truman Doctrine.' While the flattery flowed this week, deep worries swirled beneath the surface. Some Republicans reverted to the party's traditional posture of skepticism, if not outright distrust, of all things Russian. Some conservatives fretted that Mr. Trump's avowed lust for a Nobel Peace Prize rendered him too eager to forge an agreement to bring the conflict to an end. There is also concern that warmer U.S.-Russian relations may free Moscow to divert attention to cultivating Beijing. And European leaders are wary about the entire undertaking, with President Emmanuel Macron of France saying, 'I am not convinced that President Putin also wants peace.' Mr. Macron may have inadvertently been channelling an earlier French leader – Georges Clemenceau, who was prime minister between 1906 and 1909 and again from 1917 to 1920. Of Alsace-Lorraine, a onetime French territory was under German control, Mr. Clemenceau said: 'The fate of a land can be decided, for a time, upon a battlefield, but not the mastery of souls, which escape the might of the sword.'
Globe and Mail
an hour ago
- Globe and Mail
What's next for the Ukraine peace talks?
For all the extraordinary spectacle involved in U.S. President Donald Trump's talks with Russia's President last week and with Ukraine's President, accompanied by European leaders, on Monday, the most likely outcome so far is more meetings. Trump stressed that his first priority would be to help organize direct talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to bring the war in Ukraine to a close. The U.S. President said that he could then join them for subsequent rounds to help iron out remaining differences. After emerging from the Oval Office, Zelensky summed up the discussion about a key issue, security guarantees, in a way that could apply to the entire process: 'There is still a lot of work to be done.' Putin has agreed to meet with Zelensky in the coming weeks as the next phase of the peace process, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Tuesday. The U.S. National Security Council is working on a framework, she added. But Putin had previously stated that he would hold such a meeting only after all the details of a peace treaty were hammered out, and there is no indication that has changed. State news media in Russia on Tuesday played down any potential meeting, with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov suggesting that it would require intense preparation. A foreign policy aide to Putin said that the Russian leader had agreed with Trump only that the level of representation at any talks should be higher than in previous rounds. Zelensky has said that he is ready for talks in any format, and suggested at a news conference in Washington on Monday that it might require pressure from the United States to get Putin to attend. Trump rules out sending troops to Ukraine as part of security guarantees Putin has made it clear that he does not consider Ukraine a viable state, and therefore does not view Zelensky as a worthy interlocutor. On Tuesday, Lavrov dismissively referred to the Ukrainian leader, who first became famous in Russia as a television comedian, as 'this character' and 'this man.' During three earlier rounds of talks, Russia sent Vladimir Medinsky, a former culture minister and a Kremlin adviser in anti-Ukraine propaganda efforts, as its lead negotiator – a move that was interpreted as a stick in the eye to Ukraine. Putin has a reputation for slow-walking any crisis, hoping that circumstances will turn more favourable to him. There is a consensus among war analysts that Putin favours continuing the fighting because he feels that he is winning on the battlefield, and that would give him leverage in future talks, even if the gains are negligible and come with massive loss of life. Even some Russian analysts expect the Kremlin to suggest at least one more round of negotiations in Istanbul to work on a possible format for a Putin-Zelenskyy meeting. 'Each of these stages can be dragged out endlessly by diplomatic and bureaucratic negotiations, even under American pressure,' Andrei Nikulin, a Russian political commentator, wrote on the Telegram social media app. Trump has said the United States would support security guarantees provided by Europe, and that became the focus of the White House talks Monday. (While Ukraine and its European allies wanted the first step in any peace process to be a ceasefire, Trump has stressed that an overarching peace plan can be negotiated without a ceasefire.) The basic idea of the security guarantees, first broached by Britain and France last February, is that some nations, likely but not necessarily European, would provide soldiers to Ukraine to bolster its forces and create a kind of tripwire that would make Russia hesitate to invade again. Russia said Monday that it would refuse any such force from NATO countries. Analysis: Truth will likely be the last casualty of war in Ukraine Ideally, Ukraine wants weapons, foreign troops and an ironclad plan of how another invasion would be parried. No American soldiers will be deployed to Ukraine, Trump said Tuesday on Fox News, but he did not clarify what exactly he would do to support the security guarantees. 'We can certainly help in the co-ordination and perhaps provide other means of security guarantees to our European allies,' Leavitt told reporters Tuesday. 'The president understands security guarantees are crucially important to ensure a lasting peace, and he has directed his national security team to co-ordinate with our friends in Europe and also to continue to co-operate and discuss these matters with Ukraine and Russia as well.' From the outset, Putin has tried to justify invading Ukraine by accusing the West of using the country, once a pillar of the Soviet Union, as a stalking horse to undermine Russia. Putin has repeatedly referred to eradicating what he calls the 'root causes' of the war in Ukraine – his shorthand for achieving his geopolitical goals – as his red line for ending it. Those goals include keeping Ukraine out of NATO and preventing the alliance from expanding farther into former Soviet states. Among his other conditions for ending the war are annexing territory in eastern Ukraine populated mostly by ethnic Russians and ensuring that the Ukrainian military cannot threaten Russia and that the government in Kyiv is not hostile toward Moscow. The Russian military largely failed to achieve those outcomes on the battlefield, so Putin is trying to obtain them through negotiations, by leveraging the fact that Russia controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory. Having made a campaign promise that he would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, Trump has acknowledged in recent days that it was a lot harder than he had expected. Some analysts have suggested that he might just walk away, although the quest for a Nobel Peace Prize is also seen as a factor that keeps him engaged. French President Emmanuel Macron said after the talks Monday that new sanctions on Russia and on countries that trade with Russia, as well as new tariffs on Russia or its trading partners, were still possible. Putin, he noted, has continued to bomb Ukraine even after talking to Trump about peace. While threatening punishing tariffs against Russia's trading partners earlier this summer, Trump rowed back the threat after meeting with Putin in Alaska on Friday.
